For African farmers from the Sahel region, casting their eyes eagerly to the horizons, on the look out for the July monsoon rains, a new study offers hope of better forecasts. A group of scientists, using high resolution satellite data, may be able to better predict which areas in the Sahel will gifted with rain - and which won't. That could really benefit those living in this dusty belt of scrub-land, which stretches 3,000 miles from West Africa to the Red Sea coast. It is home to more than 70 million people, half of whom depend for their livelihood on farming. The work appears in this month's Nature Geoscience , and is the latest scientific study to pick up on the importance of soil moisture levels on the weather. The Sahel monsoon is triggered from late June to early July, when the weather bands snaking across the African continent make their annual leap northwards. An ...